How Marketers Can Get Blog Posts From Busy Billable Microsoft Dynamics Consultants
As a marketer, I know you have run into this problem: you need good blog topics, and the people with the best ideas are too busy to help you.
Why? Because they are billable. And billable work trumps marketing, always.
Your consultants, engineers and company founders spend all day answering customer questions and solving problems. They’re sitting on a goldmine of content. But they’re billable, busy, and unlikely to spend two hours writing a blog post for marketing.
So stop asking them to write. Just ask them to talk.
“Give Me 15 Minutes. You Don’t Have to Write Anything.”
I’ve recommended this approach to ERP and CRM Software Blog members for years.
Instead of saying, “Can you write a blog post about this?” try:
“I don’t need you to write anything. Give me 15–30 minutes. I’ll ask you a few questions, record the conversation, turn it into an article, and send it to you for a quick review.”
That is a very different request.
You need to come to the interview prepared with questions, preferably questions you know prospects and customers are actually asking. But don’t be too rigid.
If you ask your first question and suddenly your consultant is enthusiastically telling you about a completely different problem they solved last week, go with it. You want them talking about something that comes naturally to them. That is usually where the best content is hiding.
And if you finally get 30 minutes with someone who is notoriously difficult to schedule, seize the moment. You can get a tremendous amount of useful content from a knowledgeable person in half an hour.
One interview could easily produce several blog posts.
5 Questions to Ask a Subject-Matter Expert
Not sure what to ask? Start with questions like these:
1.What question do prospects ask you all the time?
2.What is something customers frequently misunderstand about this product or process?
3.What problem did you solve for a customer recently that other companies probably have too?
4.What mistake do you see companies making over and over again?
5.What do you wish prospects understood before they started an implementation or selected a solution?
You don’t have to ask all five. Listen for the question that makes the person start talking easily and enthusiastically.
That’s probably your blog post.
Your Experts May Not Realize What’s Interesting
I learned this years ago when I worked at a Microsoft Dynamics VAR.
My boss would regularly say something in conversation that immediately made my marketing brain light up. I’d stop him and say, essentially, “Wait. Say that again. I want to record this.”
The funny thing was, he often had no idea why I thought it was interesting.
Of course he didn’t. To him, it was obvious. He dealt with those issues every day.
That’s an important part of the marketer’s job.
Your consultants, engineers and company owners may not recognize that the answer they’ve given 50 times is exactly the answer a prospect is searching for. They may not realize that the unusual problem they solved last week could make a fantastic article.
Their job is to have the expertise. Your job is to recognize the content.
Use AI to Turn the Conversation Into a Draft, Not a Different Person
Today, this process is dramatically easier than it was when I was working with billable consultants. (I admit some of them would try to hide when they saw me walking towards their cubicle).
Record the interview, transcribe it and use AI to help organize the conversation into an article. AI can remove repetition, improve the structure, create headings and turn a rambling conversation into something people actually want to read.
But be careful not to polish away the person.
If the article has a consultant’s name and photo on it, it should sound like that consultant.
If Susan is a direct, practical implementation consultant, don’t use AI to transform her into a corporate marketing executive. Keep her examples. Keep her opinions. Keep some of the phrases she naturally uses.
If the article is attributed to the company rather than an individual, you have more freedom to rewrite it into a consistent brand voice.
Personally, I recommend using individual authors whenever possible.
In addition to making the content more human, named expert authors help demonstrate the real-world experience and expertise behind your content, which supports the principles behind E-E-A-T. It also helps your experts build their own professional brands.
That gives them another reason to participate.
Don’t Let a Great Post Die in Review
Getting the interview is only half the battle. You could grow old waiting for a billable consultant to find time to review a blog post.
Don’t send the draft with, “Let me know what you think whenever you get a chance.”
Give them a deadline and a publication date.
For example:
“We’re publishing this on September 15. Please send me any changes by September 12. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume it’s ready to go.”
For someone you know will never review a document sitting in their inbox, schedule another 15-minute call and review it together.
The goal is to make every step as easy as possible for the expert.
Show Them That Their 30 Minutes Was Worth It
This part is important if you want them to say yes the next time you ask.
Once the article is published, tell the author what happened.
If their post was one of your most-read articles that month, tell them. If it performed well on LinkedIn, show them. If your salespeople are sending it to prospects, let them know.
Some companies can even make this fun by tracking which authors or teams have posts generating the most traffic and creating a little friendly competition.
But the very best result you can report is:
“Your article generated a new lead.”
Or even better:
“We can tie a new sales opportunity back to your article.”
Now that consultant knows the 30 minutes they gave marketing actually contributed to the business.
Their article also becomes something they can use themselves. The next time a prospect asks the same question, instead of writing another long email, they can say, “I actually wrote an article about that. Here’s the link.”
And because their name is on the article, they are building their own body of published expertise at the same time.
Stop Asking Your Experts to Become Writers
Your company is probably sitting on a goldmine of content right now.
It’s in the heads of your consultants. It’s in conversations with your founders and company owners. It’s in the answers your engineers give customers every day.
You don’t need to turn those people into writers. You need to make it incredibly easy for them to share what they already know.
Pick one expert. Put 30 minutes on the calendar. Come prepared with good questions, press Record and see where the conversation goes.
Then let marketing and AI do the heavy lifting.
And if you’re an ERP Software Blog or CRM Software Blog member, don’t forget that you already have another place to put that expert content to work. Publish those articles under your experts’ names and start building a library of useful content that showcases the real people and expertise behind your company.
Your experts already have the content. Your job is to get it out of their heads and in front of the people who need it.
By Anya Ciecierski, Co-Founder, ERP/CRM Software Blog
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